Google Earth Community: Great Britain and Ireland Grid Lines Layer(Update)

Hi Barry,

This is marvelous stuff you are coming up with - and it is all way over my head as to the technicalities of how you do it so do be patient with me if what I am about to say sounds dumb:

I have been involved in a small way with recording plants in the UK in the old fashioned way with grid references. A vast amount of data has been collected by a number of orgs in that form and is displayed traditionally as dots in the middle of hectads [10km squares] or tetrads [2km squares], that represent the presence of a given species in that square at one of several date periods.

To me, this has always seemed rather a dead way of presenting data - one always wants to click on the dots and get right down to the actual place of the record and the information surrounding it.

Now that we have the GE placemark, I cannot see what is wrong with simply using placemarks as records; keeping a folder for each species; and displaying them on GE in much the same way as for 'hectad spots', but with the difference that what one sees is an actual record that can be accessed by clicking.

Friends in the traditional recording fraternity seem to think this would be very difficult if not impossible, and seem to want to go on constructing databases of simple 6 figure map references as they have always done; to be represented on a traditional grid as those same old dead end dots. Their favoured programme to record and generate the dot maps is called Mapmate. I, however, do not want to 'waste' time learning this and gathering data with it, if it is likely to be superceded by GE placemarks and their like in the future.

They want to cling to the grid (and units that you may or may not be aware of called 'vice counties' - that are arbitrarily fixed county units to get over political boundary revisions) - though, personally, as GE is already a natural 'world grid', I don't really see the need for the local - flat map based - ones any more. But in trying to convince the skeptics, it is very handy that you have already cracked the problem of getting the grid onto GE!

This looks very good, and may help me convince them of the possibilities offered by GE. But I am very much a novice in data management and display, so I may be getting completely the wrong end of the stick, and doing what I imagine as simple might be impossible for all I know!

Anyhow - on the subject of your UK grid, I notice that you have only given the facility of reading off a grid reference for the point in the centre of the map. Thus to get a reference, one has to guess where the middle of the map is, and then move the terrain until the spot one wants a reference of is right in the middle, before then activating your middle of the map reference feature. Is there a way to get the mouse pointer to read off the map reference alongside the lat and long that appear at the bottom of the GE screen? That would really bring your grid to life, and it would make it a real boon when I am trying to put the required (unnecessary I feel) grid references to my pictures using a pile of maps and a plastic cursor; but I suppose it must be very difficult to achieve or, no doubt, you would have done it already!

On the other hand, would it be possible for the existing data to be loaded on to GE by map reference - though to me this is a compromise as the 6 fig references would be only within 100m of the plant (if my maths is up to the job!)?

I'd much appreciate it if you could let me know if I am being really dumb in thinking that GE looks like a much better way of displaying plant records than the 'spreadsheet and dot' methods used up until now, and if it is not, then if your grid could be used to represent the data we already have accumulated by grid ref.

Best wishes,

S

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